Recent research from The Times revealed a common pain point: subscribers often didn’t know the full extent of their benefits. “I didn’t know I had X, Y, and Z in my subscription,” was a recurring theme in surveys. To solve this, the marketing team launched the “Customer Rail”, a dedicated, highly visible module on the homepage designed to surface high-value actions (HVAs) that drive long-term retention.

I spoke with Em McLaughlin to hear about how The Times developed their Customer rail strategy, and how your newsroom can implement something similar.

> The Times research revealed that subscribers often didn't know what they were paying for. So they built a permanent homepage module to surface it

> The Customer Rail is marketing-owned real estate on editorial territory, sitting under Editor's Picks and refreshed every Tuesday and Friday so regular visitors don't develop banner blindness

> It promotes the actions that correlate with staying: newsletter sign-ups, app downloads, puzzles, rewards, and sharing a subscription, which on its own improves retention by 6 percentage points

> Specificity beats sentiment in the copy. "Bonus Accounts: Share your Times subscription with your family" doubled click-through against "Give the people you love the gift of The Times"

> Since June 2025 they've tested over 120 tiles. 35% of people who acted on a Times+ promotion were first-time redeemers, and 29% who tried a puzzle came back to play on two or more later days

1. Define your “High-Value Actions” (HVAs)

Before building a rail, you must identify which behaviors actually correlate with lower churn. For The Times, these aren’t just clicks; they’re “habit markers.” 

Key HVAs identified at The Times include:

• Newsletter Sign-ups: Direct lines of communication straight into a subscribers’ inbox
• App Downloads: Shifting users to a more controlled, immersive environment.
• Bonus Accounts: Sharing a subscription (which The Times found improves retention by 6 percentage points).
• Puzzles: High-frequency, low-friction interactions that build a daily habit.
• Times+ Rewards: Redeeming exclusive discounts or entering competitions (like a high-performing Coldplay ticket giveaway last summer).

The Lesson: Work with your data team to identify which 3–5 actions separate your most loyal subscribers from those likely to churn.

2. Claim “marketing-owned” real estate

The homepage of a news site is traditionally editorial territory. However, a “Customer Rail” requires a permanent, non-negotiable space where the marketing team has autonomy.

At The Times, the rail sits directly under “Editor’s Picks.” It consists of two blocks that are updated every Tuesday and Friday. This frequency ensures that frequent visitors aren’t seeing stale promotions, which leads to “banner blindness.”

Of course, the messaging and actions are continuously tested to find the variants that connect most with subscribers. For instance: 

“Discover Bonus Accounts: Give the people you love the gift of The Times” didn’t work as well as simple “Bonus Accounts: Share your Times subscription with your family” 

By amending the feature to showcase who someone can share it with (their family) they saw a 100% uplift in CTR.

Having the control over these messages and being able to adjust based on performance, provides Em and the team with endless lessons to continuously improve. 

3. Establish a cross-functional “gatekeeper” system

To keep the content fresh and relevant, The Times established a bi-monthly stakeholder meeting. This group includes representatives from:

• Retention/Marketing: To drive the primary KPIs.
• Editorial: To ensure the brand voice is maintained.
• Product Verticals: Puzzle editors, newsletter leads, and the Times+ rewards team.

The goal is to map out upcoming launches (e.g., a new puzzle like “Word Hunt”) and rotate them against evergreen benefits (e.g., app downloads) based on past performance data.

4. Move towards deep personalization

The “North Star” for any customer rail is completion of the action, but The Times is currently moving towards a Next Best Action (NBA) model, one that hides tiles for actions a user has already taken.

• Current Restriction: All logged-in UK subscribers see the same rail.
• The Goal: If a user has already downloaded the app, they shouldn’t see an “App Download” tile. Instead, they might see a prompt to enter a competition or play a puzzle they haven’t tried yet.

The Lesson: Even without a complex algorithm, start with simple segmentation. If your tech allows it, exclude users from promotions for products they already use. 

(hint: Poool is a great tech solution for this kind of targeting throughout the funnel!) 

5. Measure quality, not just clicks

The Times uses an automated report to track click-through rates (CTR) but goes a step further by working with the analytics team quarterly to measure conversions.

“A high CTR is good, but did they actually redeem the offer, play the puzzle… i.e. complete the desired action?” asks Em McLaughlin. This data helps guide the copy. For instance, testing revealed that high-intensity calls to action like “Redeem Now” often outperform softer phrases like “See what’s on offer.”

Case Study: The Times Benchmarks

Since launching in June 2025, The Times has tested over 120 different tiles. Some of their key findings include:

• For their loyalty program (Times+), 35% of people who took an action from the rail were first-time redeemers.
• They found that 29% of users who engaged with a puzzle from the rail returned to play on two or more subsequent days.
• Data showed that female subscribers and those aged 56+ have the strongest CTR on the rail, allowing them to skew content toward culture, fashion, and newsletters that appeal to these demographics.

Ready to try it?

The customer rail is a fairly simple starting place to prove the power of pushing high value actions across the subscriber experience, using the homepage as a tool for service discovery. 

Discussing the topic:

• William Whittington, Lead Community Moderator at The Telegraph
• Birger Soiland, VP Sales at Norkon
• Peter Jackson, Reader Comment Editor at The Times and Sunday Times

Turning community features into developed strategies at The Telegraph

Will is Lead Community Moderator at The Telegraph, managing a 6-person team, leading on their community and moderation strategy.

“Commenting is subscriber-only, and whilst it’s only one of the functions that we use to engage our audience, it’s maybe the foundation of our community model, using this to get readers involved in our journalism.

For instance, since the beginning of this year we’ve been working closely with our editorial team to get writers involved in the comments section, interacting with our audience. It’s one of the strategies that’s been the most effective in getting readers engaged. We’ve seen a 119% increase in the number of comments that are posted once an author has ‘gone below the line’ (i.e. joined the comments section).”

For example, journalists such as David Frost go into the comments section at a specific time each week. This is marketed on social media, on the homepage and app (including push notifications) to encourage readers to get involved.

Best practices that have made this strategy so effective:

• Signposting the fact that a journalist is ‘going below the line’ across all platforms, with a specific time for readers to join
• Being able to pin comments to highlight them to readers
• Have a badge to verify journalists so readers know to trust them
• Highlight the best questions and answers with a particle, making readers feel recognized and valued

“Getting journalists involved has helped us show the value of an engaged community to our business model. In turn, this ensures the comments section is not only active but contributing to our journalism.”

Best practice: share the success of your community with the whole organization to bring teams onboard and get them involved in engaging with your readers.

> To read next: From community to reader revenue: lessons to learn from The Independent and Reach PLC

Engaging in different ways

Polling is a way of getting immediate responses from audiences, on-site, in newsletters and on socials. And articles can be produced off the back of these.

“One of the polls following an election debate received 95,000 responses, one of the highest voting numbers ever seen, so much so that Nigel Farage shared it on socials!”

They also have weekly Q&As where readers submit their questions, published in a variety of formats: articles and live.

Gamification for community engagement

Birger joined the discussion from a gamification perspective, sharing how this format can be valuable for community development and activation at all steps in the funnel.

• Acquiring new audiences, including younger readers. For example, one of the publishers working with Norkon found that 40% of players are between 18-35 years old, including more females than their average readership
• Games and competitiveness brings readers back to your site again and again, plus these games can be connected to other engagement formats such as commenting or live blogging so users can communicate with other players and feel part of a community. Articles can also be tied to games to loop back to your journalism
• Integrating conversion steps into games to get more value from these readers. For instance a simple registration wall to ask readers to create a free account in order to continue playing, save their progress and chat with other users

> Dive deeper: How DN leveraged gamification to attract a younger audience, and got almost 35,000 new registered users

Birger also spoke to the value of gamification for advertising revenue. For instance by having sponsors for a live Q&A or game, providing the prize to winning participants.

Reader-led journalism at The Times and Sunday Times

Peter is the Reader Comment Editor at The Times, with a team of 8 Reader Comment Journalists working to increase engagement through community. Whilst the team do moderate comments, they do a whole lot more than that!

“Reader-led articles give a direct voice to our readers, but it also improves our journalism! The piece on the right below came from a call-out at the bottom of an article that got an amazing response from people telling us about how they beat their diagnoses. We ran it as a story and it really humanized the journalism. The other piece came from the simple idea of asking why people were running the London marathon. It pulled very touching stories together, and you could see in the comments section how positive the reaction was. These reader-led articles often bring yet more valued conversation within the community.”

It’s about community members not only seeing other community members as individuals and hearing their stories, but also allowing each reader to imagine themselves in this context, connecting with the brand in a much more human way.

Live Q&A

Live Q&As are another important engagement tool to directly connect The Time’s readers and writers.

“For instance, before the Euros kicked off, we had a dedicated hour where our experts answered questions and offered color on the topic. The quality of the conversation is so high in these cases because our readers have an invested interest. They’ve come to the experience ready to engage and participate. These 1-to-1 conversations with top journalists that subscribers get access to is incredibly valued.”

Like The Telegraph, The Times also works with polls and embedded carousels to elevate comments, but they also feature reader contributions in their journalism, such as “Reader’s recipe”. Peter highlights how this has a positive impact on the brand, showing how The Times values its readers.

Reducing toxicity

Back in 2022, The Times worked on a project to reduce toxicity by reducing anonymity in their comments section. The idea: “people should know who they’re speaking to if you want a high quality conversation.”

At the time, only 37% of commenters were using their real name, today they’re at an impressive 98%.

“It was a long process involving many different departments at The Times, and lots of communication around it. Subscribers were told early on that they needed to use their real name, and there was a 3-step process to do this. But since making the change we’ve seen toxicity come down – it’s a safer, more welcoming community, and attacks on writers was down 25% – and an increase in the number of comments. People who don’t use a real name stick out for a bad reason – they’re now blocked and then become compliant.“

“Our top commenters – not necessarily in quantity but in how their comments are received, liked and replied to – were invited to visit the newsroom, meet our editors and spend the day with us, as a way of saying thank you. We turned this into a piece for the site, allowing other commenters to see how we take community seriously.”

Thank you so much to our panelists for being part of The Audiencers’ Festival!